"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the
animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel
nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest
lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
Samuel Adams, (1722-1803)

Monday, October 31, 2011

TOKYO — A Japanese lawmaker has drunk a glass of water taken from a radioactive puddle inside a reactor building at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in a bid to prove decontamination efforts are working.

Television footage showed a visibly nervous Yasuhiro Sonoda gulping down water that he said had been decontaminated after being scooped up from inside the plant.

“Just drinking (decontaminated water) doesn’t mean safety has been confirmed, I know that,” Sonoda told reporters. “Presenting data to the public is the best way.”...........

Trick Or Treat! Obama Derangement Syndrome Is At The Door In the latest round of Obama Derangement Syndrome, right-wing media attacked the Obamas for handing out fruit along with candy to trick-or-treaters at the White House. Previously, right-wing media have attacked the president over Hurricane Irene, the East Coast earthquake, healthy eating, the White House Easter Egg Roll, and the death of Osama bin Laden. Read More

CNBC's Bartiromo Adopts Right-Wing's Boeing Falsehoods During an interview with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, CNBC's Maria Bartiromo whitewashed Boeing's alleged discrimination against union workers and suggested that the National Labor Relations Board should not intervene when companies violate the law to intimidate union workers. Right-wing media have repeatedly distorted the facts about NLRB's complaint against Boeing, including wrongly asserting that the NLRB brought suit against Boeing "because the jobs are non-union." Read More

Wash. Post Article Repeatedly Misleads On Social Security A Washington Post article on Social Security repeated a plethora of myths and falsehoods that surround the program and used loaded language to describe Social Security's finances. The article has been hailed and repeated in the right-wing media and criticized by progressives. Read More

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote Tuesday on a resolution to affirm the phrase “In God We Trust” as the nation’s official motto, according to Politico.

Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA), the founder and chairman of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, sponsored the legislation. It would encourage the public display of the motto in all public buildings, public schools and government institutions.........................

WASHINGTON—A team of leading archaeologists announced Monday they had uncovered the remains of an ancient job-creating race that, at the peak of its civilization, may have provided occupations for hundreds of thousands of humans in the American Nort... more »

Farcical egomaniac joke candidate Herman Cain and his team are trying to mop up a Gulf-sized oil spill with paper towels today after POLITICO SCOOPED THE UNIVERSE with unsurprising news that old Herm is allegedly a terrible lech who sexually harassed two female employees while serving as the head of the National Restaurant Association, by unimaginatively arguing the entire story is the fault of the “liberals.” Wrong tack, team! Creepy sexual behavior is the only thing so far that we have heard about Herman Cain that makes him seem like a legitimate politician after all. Why not try that angle? READ MORE »

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Right-Wing Media Go On Attack Against Student Debt Relief Fox News and the right-wing media are attacking President Obama's student loan relief plan as a "campaign speech" and an attempt to "buy votes." Obama's plan is designed to help ease the burden of student loans for millions of people by lowering interest rates, consolidating outstanding student loans, and providing debt relief to students after they spend 20 years paying off their loans. Read More

REPORT: In Immigration Coverage, Fox Shuns Pro-Immigrant Voices A year ago, News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch claimed that Fox News is not "anti-immigrant," a statement seemingly contradicted by near-daily segments on the network portraying immigrants in a negative light. Now, a Media Matters analysis of Fox News guests from April 2010 to June 2011 has found that of the guests Fox chose to discuss immigration, an overwhelming majority took anti-immigrant positions or held anti-immigrant views. In fact, our data show that anti-immigrant guests outnumbered those with a pro-immigrant point of view by a 3-to-1 margin. Read More

Inevitable: Right-Wing Media Freak Out Over Nonexistent "ACORN" Tie To Occupy Wall Street Led by Fox News, right-wing media have claimed that ACORN is playing a "behind [the] scenes role" in Occupy Wall Street, alleging that the group New York Communities for Change (NYCC) -- which is led by a former ACORN official -- is paying people to join protests and collecting money to fund OWS activities. But NYCC has flatly denied these claims, and ACORN -- which has been a right-wing media bogeyman for years -- disbanded in November 2010. Read More

Fox News Attacks Green Loan To Steel Company Severstal In its latest assault on green technology loans that have been supported by the Obama administration, Fox News is now targeting a loan to the Michigan-based steel company Severstal North America. According to the company and the Department of Energy, respectively, the loan will allow Severstal North America to create hundreds of jobs and help cut thousands of metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year. Read More

House Republicans took the government to the brink of shutdown last spring by demanding across-the-board budget cuts to many vital programs. Instead of focusing on job creation, as Americans wanted them to, the GOP turned its attention to slashing funds for programs that funded assistance for women and children, local law enforcement, the social safety net, environmental protections, and many other programs they deemed as either too expensive or unnecessary. Worse, when challenged on why they hadn’t made the effort to tackle high unemployment, Republicans insisted that their slash-and-burn budget cuts were meant to create jobs.

Not all of those cuts made it through, but the GOP succeeded in passing massive spending reductions as part of a continuing resolution that kept the government operating. According to a new report from the Center for American Progress’ Scott Lilly, those cuts didn’t result in the job creating boon Republicans insisted would follow. Instead, it has done just the opposite, as those cuts will result in the destruction of roughly 370,000 jobs.

Lilly’s report focuses on three major areas where Republicans insisted on spending cuts: funding for local law enforcement, environmental cleanup of sites where nuclear weapons were disabled and destroyed, and investments into construction, repair, and maintenance of government buildings. Cuts to just those three areas will result in the loss of 90,000 jobs, the report found — 60,000 from direct cuts, and 30,000 additional jobs lost from the secondary impacts of job losses in each community.

And according to Lilly, those three areas weren’t among the worst budget cuts forced through by the Republican House:

“Similar stories could be told about many other budget cuts made in this bill—cuts that resulted in further job losses,” said Scott Lilly, author of the report and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. “All of the various 250 program reductions in the fiscal year 2011 Continuing Resolution probably eliminated more than 370,000 American jobs. The three areas selected for discussion in this paper are in my judgment neither the worst cuts made by the committee from a policy standpoint nor the best. But without a doubt they demonstrate the consequences of slashing government spending in a weak economy.”

According to the report, the $2.5 billion cut to local law enforcement funding could have prevented 36,000 police layoffs nationwide, and similar cuts made to grant programs could have prevented the loss of other state and local government jobs. Crunched by the recession and budget cuts, state and local governments shed more than 200,000 jobs in 2010 alone. Republicans not only cut such funding this spring but have now opposed the American Jobs Act — which included grants to state and local governments for the hiring of teachers, police officers, and firefighters.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

"The Most Exciting Tax Plan Since Reagan's": Right-Wing Media Tout Perry's Flat Tax Following the release of Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry's (TX) tax plan, conservative media have hyped the plan, claiming it is "exciting" and a "radical improvement" over the current system. However, economists from across the spectrum have criticized Perry's plan, noting that it will lead to "substantial" revenue loss and "draconian cuts" while "undermin[ing]" the need to make the tax code simpler. Read More

Freedom fighter Darren Huff is a half-wit Georgia Militia birther goon in the news lately for being convicted of plotting a commando assault on the Monroe County courthouse in Tennessee, his mission being to punish a few lowly municipal employees for the sin of refusing to try to remove President Obama from office.

He brought with him the usual violent nutjob accountrements such as an AK-47, a Colt .45 and several hundred rounds of ammunition, but according to the FBI’s “Returned Property” document detailing the items that were given back to Huff after his arrest, he also apparently needed his trusty remote-controlled pink dildo and his DVD of “Tranny Hunter” to help him fulfill his crusader mandate from Jeebus. READ MORE »

The vicious professional Muslim-haters of the anti-religious freedom organization “Preserving Freedom Conference” were all set to make their pretty pennies holding a sweaty, paranoid circle jerk for Islamo-fear fetishists at the Hutton Hotel in Nashville, but the mean venue owners canceled their booking contract after they realized it might be bad for business to be seen hosting a gathering of feverish bigots. This, of course, can mean only one thing: BLAME THE SHARIA WITCH MAGIC, and organizers promptly declared the hotel under the spell of Allah’s oppressor demons. READ MORE »

Monday, October 24, 2011

"Iran Won": Fox Attacks Obama For Ending Iraq War Following President Obama's announcement that all troops would leave Iraq by the end of the year, Fox News has scrambled to attack Obama's foreign policy, calling the development a "strategic tragedy" and speculating that it could mean the lives of American troops killed in Iraq could have been "wasted." Read More

Pat Buchanan's History Of Anti-LGBT Bigotry In his new book Suicide of a Superpower, MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan attacks the idea of gays serving in the military as an "indoctrination of recruits, soldiers, and officers into an acceptance of the gay life style" and calls same-sex marriage an "absurd notion of equality." Buchanan has a long history of anti-LGBT bigotry. He has called gays "sodomites" and said they are "literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide"; called homosexuality a "disorder" that can be handled with therapy; and said that in "a healthy society, it will be contained, segregated, controlled, and stigmatized." Read More

UPDATED: The Lies Of James O'Keefe Convicted criminal James O'Keefe has released a new video -- this time attacking Huffington Post reporter Sam Stein and the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan progressive think tank. Journalists covering the story should be aware of O'Keefe's history of lies and deception. Read More

Fox Host Bob Beckel Doubles As A Fox CriticThe Five co-host Bob Beckel, who frequently fills the slot of the show's sole liberal, has repeatedly corrected the false and misleading claims of his fellow co-hosts, as well as exposed Fox News' selective editorial policies. Read More

As ThinkProgress has reported, so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” that claim to help women in need are actually established by anti-abortion activists with the sole objective of shaming women out of having abortions. Despite receiving federal and state funding, they have a history of preying on and misleading pregnant women who are seeking abortions and giving them false medical information to dissuade them from making their own decisions.

After a year-long investigation, a new report to be released today by the pro-choice group NARAL reveals that those problems plague the vast majority of North Carolina’s crisis pregnancy centers. In addition to providing false medical information, many of the centers actively proselytize and tell women of non-Christian faiths to convert or face damnation:

In recent years, NARAL Pro-Choice state chapters have conducted investigations into the pregnancy clinics in New York, California, Maryland, Texas and Virginia, reaching the same general conclusions. Over the past year, the North Carolina office of the organization embarked on an identical investigation, studying the centers’ websites and other material, and sending staff and volunteers posing as pregnant women or couples into the clinics. [...]

NARAL says it found the majority of the centers it investigated in North Carolina had no medical professionals on staff, and only a quarter of them disclosed they were not medical facilities. More than two-thirds provided distorted or false information about abortion risks and consequences.

The report says one Jewish investigator who posed as a pregnant woman was told at five centers she wouldn’t go to heaven unless she converted to Christianity, and that one volunteer challenged her to become a “born-again virgin.”

The number of centers in North Carolina has nearly doubled since 2006, and there are eight times as many of them as there are abortion clinics. Carey Pope, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina, said the group’s investigators found numerous instances where crisis pregnancy centers were misinforming and misleading women. “Staff and volunteers often use propaganda to dissuade women from abortions,” she said.

Yet while receiving this government largesse, crisis pregnancy centers are not subjected to regular inspections like abortion clinics and often avoid any scrutiny of their practices, which openly flout the line between religious advocacy and medical counseling.

In 2006, a congressional investigation found the “vast majority” of federally funded centers provided false or misleading information, often suggesting that there are links between abortion and breast cancer, infertility and mental illness.

More drama from the Michele Bachmann campaign! Her former team of New Hampshire staffers who all quit Friday put out a very crabby press release stating that they quit not for the glaringly obvious reasons that Michele Bachmann is a serial pill-snarfing nutcase Space Jesus freak married to a flaming closet case who together make hundreds of thousands of dollars off the government through creepy fake homo-curing clinic rackets and Michele’s shell career as a U.S. Representative who collects a fat public salary and benefits for doing sub-zero quantities of legislative work, BUT — instead — because her national campaign team treated them mean.

Whatever works! Michele initially tried to claim in her usual reality-defying fashion that these staffers had not actually abandoned their jobs and it was all some kind of socialist media conspiracy, but No, Not This Time. They specifically want us to know they quit because they’re angry at her campaign, and they have lots of dirt to share, after the jump! READ MORE »

With protesters taking to the streets around the world to fight for better income equality and economic opportunities for the poor and middle classes, the Vatican called Monday for an overhaul of world’s financial systems and a return to a global economy based on ethical behavior and “achievement of a universal common good,” the AP reports. While the Vatican has, in the past, criticized uncontrolled capitalism, the new call goes further, decrying “an economic liberalism that spurns all rules and controls.”

The Vatican release is a clear sign that it supports the message of the Occupy Wall Street protests, Vincent J. Miller, the Gudorf Chair in Catholic Theology and Culture at the University of Dayton, said in a press release:

“While conservative leaders and several presidential candidates want to eviscerate financial reform, the Vatican has sent a powerful message that prudent regulation of our financial system is a moral priority. I expect Catholic neo-cons who usually present themselves as the defenders of orthodoxy will ignore or scramble to defuse this timely teaching. It’s clear the Vatican stands with the Occupy Wall Street protesters and others struggling to return ethics and good governance to a financial sector grown out of control after 30 years of deregulation.”

This isn’t the first time faith leaders have spoken out against so-called religious conservatives who have prioritized tax cuts for the wealthy and repealing financial regulations over helping low-income Americans. A group of Catholic bishops signed a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) — both practicing Catholics — during the debt limit fight, denouncing budget cuts that disproportionately hurt the poor. Other religious leaders made similar calls, with Rev. Jim Wallis telling Republicans, “We did not get into fiscal trouble because of poor people. … The poor didn’t cause this. Let’s not make them pay for it.”

Saturday, October 22, 2011

British Member of Parliament Tom Watson visited the contentious News Corporation shareholders meeting yesterday and made it clear that the phone hacking scandal is far from behind the media conglomerate. At the meeting, Watson told Murdoch that the 200 police officers on the case are investigating claims that range from conspiring to pervert the course of justice, executives committing perjury, and bribery of public officials, including police officers. Watson also alleged that cases of computer hacking are soon to surface.

As I previously posted, "objective" Fox News host Jon Scott greeted the news that President Obama will draw down all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of the year with snideness - over the venue of the announcement. We've grabbed the video from Media Matters.

Epic head case Michele Bachmann’s entire New Hampshire staff has resigned en masse because she refuses to focus on the state, although reports saying that Rick Perry’s campaign is already busy pilfering some of them indicate this is mostly due to her being a blathering loser.

She is such a loser, in fact, that the roaming liberal hippie mobs of San Francisco did not even bother to wander over and chant some godless queerness at her when she visited the city on Thursday, even for old times’ sake, for fear of catching a boredom-induced coma. READ MORE »

Terminally panicky villain-child Eric Cantor was all set to deliver a speech on “income inequality” and its many virtues to what he thought would be a carefully selected audience of approvingly docile business students at the Wharton School, but at the last minute university officials reminded Cantor’s office that the event would be open to the public.

Cantor immediately cancelled his address in response, out of a rank fear that the cesspool of unemployed and low-wage commoners and Occupy Philadelphia protesters might turn up to ask a few questions about his Plan for Their Future (Guantanamo). READ MORE »

Fox News has recently expressed outrage over alleged "insults" and "scare tactics" that President Obama and Vice President Biden have used during speeches around the country, with Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy asking if such strategies are "turning off the independent voters." But Fox News has spent years relentlessly insulting and smearing both Obama and Biden, and have used scare tactics to attack Obama. Read More

Ah, the old “probably it was some guy who broke into my hotel room and took pictures of me sleeping in my underwear” excuse. Medford, New Jersey mayor Chris Myers is here to fill the weekly news slot reserved for the outing of one or another garden variety self-loathing, escort-loving closeted Republican politician with a weak claim that he is totally clueless as to how a California rentboy got all those photos of Myers and his magical Superman-sized briefs asleep in a hotel bed (along with pictures of his IDs and his cell phone number). Or, uh, Photoshop maybe? Probably it was the terrorists with their Photoshop. READ MORE »

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Last month President Obama finally unveiled a serious economic stimulus plan — far short of what I’d like to see, but a step in the right direction. Republicans, predictably, have blocked it. But the new plan, combined with the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, seems to have shifted the national conversation. We are, suddenly, focused on what we should have been talking about all along: jobs.

So what is the G.O.P. jobs plan? The answer, in large part, is to allow more pollution. So what you need to know is that weakening environmental regulations would do little to create jobs and would make us both poorer and sicker.

Now it would be wrong to say that all Republicans see increased pollution as the answer to unemployment. Herman Cain says that the unemployed are responsible for their own plight — a claim that, at Tuesday’s presidential debate, was met with wild applause.

Both Rick Perry and Mitt Romney have, however, put weakened environmental protection at the core of their economic proposals, as have Senate Republicans. Mr. Perry has put out a specific number — 1.2 million jobs — that appears to be based on a study released by the American Petroleum Institute, a trade association, claiming favorable employment effects from removing restrictions on oil and gas extraction. The same study lies behind the claims of Senate Republicans.

But does this oil-industry-backed study actually make a serious case for weaker environmental protection as a job-creation strategy? No.

Part of the problem is that the study relies heavily on an assumed “multiplier” effect, in which every new job in energy leads indirectly to the creation of 2.5 jobs elsewhere. Republicans, you may recall, were scornful of claims that government aid that helps avoid layoffs of schoolteachers also indirectly helps save jobs in the private sector. But I guess the laws of economics change when it’s an oil company rather than a school district doing the hiring.

Moreover, even if you take the study’s claims at face value, it offers little reason to believe that dirtier air and water can solve our current employment crisis. All the big numbers in the report are projections for late this decade. The report predicts fewer than 200,000 jobs next year, and fewer than 700,000 even by 2015.

You might want to compare these numbers with a couple of other numbers: the 14 million Americans currently unemployed, and the one million to two million jobs that independent estimates suggest the Obama plan would create, not in the distant future, but in 2012.

More pollution, then, isn’t the route to full employment. But is there a longer-term economic case for less environmental protection? No. Serious economic analysis actually says that we need more protection, not less.

The important thing to understand is that the case for pollution control isn’t based on some kind of aesthetic distaste for industrial society. Pollution does real, measurable damage, especially to human health.

And policy makers should take that damage into account. We need more politicians like the courageous governor who supported environmental controls on a coal-fired power plant, despite warnings that the plant might be closed, because “I will not create jobs or hold jobs that kill people.”

Actually, that was Mitt Romney, back in 2003 — the same politician who now demands that we use more coal.

How big are these damages? A new study by researchers at Yale and Middlebury College brings together data from a variety of sources to put a dollar value on the environmental damage various industries inflict. The estimates are far from comprehensive, since they only consider air pollution, and they make no effort to address longer-term issues such as climate change. Even so, the results are stunning.

For it turns out that there are a number of industries inflicting environmental damage that’s worth more than the sum of the wages they pay and the profits they earn — which means, in effect, that they destroy value rather than creating it. High on the list, by the way, is coal-fired electricity generation, which the Mitt Romney-that-was used to stand up to.

As the study’s authors say, finding that an industry inflicts large environmental damage compared with its apparent economic return doesn’t necessarily mean that the industry should be shut down. What it means, instead, is that “the regulated levels of emissions from the industry are too high.” That is, environmental regulations aren’t strict enough.

Republicans, of course, have strong incentives to claim otherwise: the big value-destroying industries are concentrated in the energy and natural resources sector, which overwhelmingly donates to the G.O.P. But the reality is that more pollution wouldn’t solve our jobs problem. All it would do is make us poorer and sicker.

Fox Attacks Sen. Reid Over Accurate Statement On Private-Sector Jobs Fox News' Eric Bolling and Greta Van Susteren criticized Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid over his statement that "it's very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine. It's the public-sector jobs where we've lost huge numbers." In fact, since the Recovery Act took effect, the private sector has gained 1.4 million jobs, while the public sector has lost 572,000. Read More

The All-Spin Zone: O'Reilly Makes A Hash Of Obama's Economic Record In a single segment of his show, Bill O'Reilly made a series of false or misleading claims about President Obama's economic record, arguing that Obama's embrace of spending greatly expanded the deficit, that the stimulus was "didn't work very well," that increasing taxes on the rich won't "put a dent" in federal debt, and that the United States is on a path to Greek-style economic disaster. None of these claims stand up to scrutiny. Read More

Steyn Ignores Record-High Wealth Of Top 1 Percent To Push Tax Break For Wealthy On Fox News, conservative commentator Mark Steyn claimed that "when you don't take" money from the richest 1 percent of taxpayers, they "hire people, they invest." But Steyn ignored the fact that the top 1 percent of earners have seen their earnings skyrocket in the past 10 years -- in part due to historically low tax burdens -- and yet hiring remains low. Read More

The Washington Post is out with an article that could knock the GOP halo off Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) head.

Short version: Rubio has been saying for years that his family fled Castro’s Cuba, part of a generation of Cubans displaced by the Communist dictator. But that’s not exactly true.

Rubio is at the top of most lists for potential VP nominee next fall and his star really couldn’t be any brighter among Republicans. But the Post found some of the story he’s told on his way up the political ladder is a little off.

From the Post:

[A] review of documents — including naturalization papers and other official records — reveals that Rubio’s dramatic account of his family saga embellishes the facts. The documents show that Rubio’s parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than 2½ years before Castro’s forces overthrew the Cuban government and took power on New Year’s Day 1959.

When the Rubio family came to America, “the future Marxist dictator was in Mexico plotting a quixotic return to Cuba,” the Post writes..................................

75 Percent of Americans Support Democrats’ Plan to Put Teachers, First Responders Back to Work and Ask Millionaires to Pay Their Fair Share

Washington, D.C. –Nevada Senator Harry Reid made the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding overwhelming public support – even among Republicans – for Democrats’ plan to put 400,000 teachers, police and firefighters back to work. Below are his remarks as prepared for delivery:

This week my Republican colleagues have railed against the Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act, Democrats’ latest proposal to create hundreds of thousands of American jobs.

They point to a similar program with a proven track record of keeping 422,000 teachers in the classroom for a year as evidence this legislation will be “a failure.” But that’s because they’re using a different benchmark for success than we are.

Democrats’ number one priority is to create jobs. So to us, putting hundreds of thousands of people back to work teaching children, patrolling our streets and fighting fires constitutes a success.

But Republicans’ number one priority is to defeat President Obama, and their strategy is to keep the economy weak as long as possible. So they oppose legislation we know beyond a shadow of a doubt will support 400,000 American jobs without adding a penny to the deficit.

Never mind that Republicans have yet to propose a single idea of their own to get 14 million people working again. Never mind that in the past they have supported every one of the job creation measures that we’ve proposed.

Republicans get up every day and come to work to oppose the policies that will turn our economy around for one reason and one reason only: politics.

To me – and to most Americans – putting politics ahead of this country’s economic future is so far outside the mainstream it’s barely on the map.

But Republicans have been very candid about their goal this Congress. My friend, the Minority Leader, said this: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

Defeating job-creating legislation, defeating the economy and defeating the President – that’s how Republicans measure success. But Americans don’t share those values.............

Not yet ready to stomach the gruesome, hardcore images of Muammar Gaddafi’s capture and death flying around the Internet? Here for you then is a bland, insipid version of Gaddafi’s demise brought to you by, who else, the 1980s! Eerily, this segment about Gaddafi reaching the office of St. Peter (where all bad Muslims go?) from this short-lived 1987 Matthew Perry sitcom Second Chance was mystically set in the world of 2011, which means, terrifyingly, that the 80s finally got exactly one thing right. READ MORE »

Some misguided wingnut (whoops, that’s a redunderancy there!) thought that the most critical entertainment items to mail all the way overseas to a bunch of U.S. troops stationed in Bumblefuck, Afghanistan were a couple boxes of crazed loofah-humper Bill O’Reilly’s book Pinheads and Patriots, presumably on the assumption that soldiers would enjoy masturbating to O’Reilly’s noxious screeds just as much as right-wing idiots. Wrong! Instead, the soldiers did the sensible thing and set them on fire. READ MORE »

As infamous walking cue-ball “Joe the Plumber” proved in 2008, America is top-loaded with dubiously employed gasbag wingnuts who believe they are the economic equals of the Koch Brothers. Each near-bankrupt sole proprietor of a drywall-hanging home-based business that hasn’t had any work since 2007 is now threatening to “stop job creation” because of the people protesting the banks. What happens when the teabaggers “go Galt” and nobody notices? READ MORE »

The right-wing media have engaged in arelentless smear campaign against the Occupy Wall Street movement, including calling the protesters socialists and Marxists, saying they represent the "fringe of the fringe of the fringe," and claiming they "sound like the Unabomber," among other attacks. Read More

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – A jubilant President Barack Obama said that tonight’s Republican forum was “the best debate ever,” calling it “the first good news I’ve had since I nailed bin Laden.”

Mr. Obama watched the debate surrounded by advisors in the White House Situation Room, where the mood was said to be tense “up until the first time Rick Perry opened his mouth.”

“I’m not a big TV watcher,” Mr. Obama said, “but that debate had to be the most entertaining two hours I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing.”

Mr. Obama confirmed that he had DVRd the debate for future screenings at the White House, which tonight was the site of a spectacular fireworks display in the moments after the debate’s conclusion.

Among the debate’s highlights, the Republican candidates took pains to enumerate their plentiful broods of children, which added up to a number slightly greater than the population of China.

For his part, Gov. Perry of Texas made the biggest impression by questioning the existence of Social Security, climate change, earth, wind and fire.

Also notable were his pro-execution comments, which tonight won him the coveted endorsement of the National Association of Electric Chair Manufacturers.

“We don’t have high unemployment in Texas,” he noted with pride, “because if you don’t have a job, we kill you.”

And in perhaps the most revealing moment of the debate, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn) explained why she does not believe in evolution: “It’s really let me down.” Read More Here

What binds a large majority of the protesters together—regardless of age, socioeconomic status or education—is a deep commitment to left-wing policies: opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth…

At Capital New York, Azi Paybarah has obtained the full poll results, and Schoen appears to have grossly misrepresented the results of his poll. He writes that a “large majority” are bound together by support for a “radical redistribution of wealth.” But when he asked the protesters what they’d like the Occupy Wall Street movement to achieve, just 4 percent said “radical redistribution of wealth,” which tied for last on the list of answers given. There is no mention of “radical redistribution of wealth” anywhere else in the poll.

Meanwhile, 35 percent said they would like to “influence the Democratic Party,” Here are the full results of that question:

Similarly, while Schoen writes that a “large majority” express “opposition to free-market capitalism,” when asked what frustrates them most about the U.S. political process, only 3 percent named “our democratic/capitalist system.” Out of 198 respondents, that amounts to five or six people, which is quite the opposite of a large majority. Here are the full results for that question:

Schoen also writes that “[s]ixty-five percent say that government has a moral responsibility to guarantee all citizens access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement—no matter the cost.” But the actual question makes no mention of costs.

Oh, this is cute: delusional pizza man Herman Cain made his presidential campaign purchase over a hundred grand in copies of his own weird book sold by his own for-profit company! That is why God invented long-shot political campaigns after all, to help ambitious grifters shill prematurely titled books like This Is Herman Cain! My Journey to the White Housefilled with curious exhortations to illiteracy such as “I like to say I’m a leader, not a reader.” Only SHEEPLE read. Anyway, Herman Cain will keep running for president until all his books about the pointlessness of reading are sold, to his campaign. Good “business plan.” READ MORE »

Listen to Herman Cain on the campaign trail, and you’ll hear him mock President Obama’s stimulus program a dozen different ways. Cain calls the program “a waste of money” that “didn’t stimulate anything other than bigger government” and a failure. One problem with Cain’s barrage of attacks? He sat on the board of directors of American corporations that applied for and received millions in stimulus money.

According to his personal financial disclosure (view a copy here), Cain supplements his income by being a board member for several large corporations. As a board member, he collected $202,500 from Agco Corporation, a farm products company, and $259,008 from Whirlpool Corporation (including options and a board salary). A review of stimulus spending records reveal that Cain’s companies have eagerly accepted stimulus money:

– Agco Corporation received up to $5 million of stimulus grants to develop “supply systems to handle and deliver high tonnage biomass feedstocks for cellulosic biofuels production.”

– Whirlpool Corporation received a $19,330,000 stimulus grant from the Department of Energy to develop SmartGrid solutions.

– Whirlpool launched a special offer to encourage customers to take advantage of the stimulus program’s energy efficient appliance program. The company advertised that certain Whirlpool, Maytag and KitchenAid appliances are available for rebate through the $300 million rebate program authorized by the stimulus.

– Whirlpool also received two stimulus grants of $2,042,700 to develop next generation energy efficient refrigerators.

Luckily for Cain, one of his corporations did not appear to receive any tainted stimulus money. According to his disclosure, Cain received $120,000 for his role on the board of Hallmark Cards Inc, the holiday greeting card company. A search by ThinkProgress reveals zero stimulus dollars directed to Hallmark.

Monday, October 17, 2011

1,000 Days Of Right-Wing Media Hoping President Obama Fails Right-wing media figures are marking today's 1,000th day of the Obama administration by using a 2009 comment by President Obama to reinforce the right-wing talking point that he has failed to improve the economy. This latest right-wing attempt against Obama continues a historic campaign to bring down his administration; however, economic experts agree that the economy would be much worse without Obama administration policies. Read More

Wash. Times Ignores Employer Protection To Attack Jobs Act In an October 14 editorial, The Washington Times attacked a provision of President Obama's American Jobs Act (AJA) aimed at preventing discrimination against the unemployed, claiming it would expose employers to "frivolous lawsuits if they decide against hiring someone who has been jobless for an extended time." But the Times failed to note that the AJA also protects employers' right to consider "reasons underlying an individual's status as unemployed." Read More

Study Finds Obama Received "Unrelentingly Negative" Media Coverage Conservative media figures have frequently argued that President Obama has received favorable coverage from a supposedly adoring media, but a new study from Pew finds that "negative assessments of Obama have outweighed positive by a ratio of almost 4-to-1." While some observers (including Media Matters) have in the past questioned the usefulness of similar studies, conservative have cited past Pew reports to portray the rest of the media as biased. Read More

LANCASTER, PA—After centuries of enduring harsh, spare living conditions and voluntarily shunning modern amenities such as microwave ovens and red clothing, Amish leaders announced Monday that Amish across the U.S. will abandon their traditional ways and adapt to modern American life.

“Fuck that,” said Amish Father Ezekiel Schmid at a Lancaster press conference. “This is pure bullshit.”

Schmid recounted the hard Amish life, in which many long hours are spent toiling under the hot sun in heavy black clothing without any refrigerated drinks or gas-powered farm machines. He spoke of the arduous task of raising barns by hand from dawn until dusk, and of laboriously churning his own butter without electrical power.

“I can’t believe we were such suckers,” Schmid said. “I feel like a fool.”

Schmid added that he will shave off his “ridiculous” Pennsylvania Dutch-style beard with no mustache, a look he says went out of fashion in “about 1820.”

“Why didn’t anyone ever tell me how stupid I looked?” he said.

According to Schmid, the Amish look forward to a wide variety of “alternative lifestyle” opportunities that now await them.

“I am indeed looking forward to wearing clothing that is a color other than black,” said Josephat Kreugger, a prominent Kruegger, an Amish counsel member. “I will try on some dark gray suits, perhaps even medium gray. I am also considering buying a charcoal-colored hat.”

Kreugger also expressed a desire to travel “twice the speed of horse.”

Many social changes await the Amish, as well.

“When I punish my son for not saying his prayers,” Mary Wittgenstein said, “I normally use a wooden switch taken from a tree. But now, think of the modern child-beating weapons that will be available to me in the outside world. Perhaps there are whips made especially for use on disobedient children, or muskets.”

Many Amish are looking forward to getting jobs in the real world. Amish farmer Abraham Verveert said he has greatly entertained other Amish people at church meetings with his rousing scripture readings, and hopes to capitalize on that talent by taking his Bible-reading on the road.

“I have readings scheduled at nightclubs and ballrooms across the country, and judging by the gleeful reaction of my Amish brethren, I believe I will find great success entertaining outsiders with my lively readings,” Verveert said. “This week, I will be reading a particularly delightful passage from Corinthians at the Sunrise Motor Inn in Kew Gardens, NY. You will surely want to be present.”

One Amish couple, Jacob and Sarah Neamer, plan to move to an apartment in a major city and adopt a modern lifestyle, but will continue to make a living the only way they know how.

“We will charge admission for people to enter our home and observe our lifestyle,” Sarah said. “For $12.50, or $10 with coupon, you can watch us as we cook meals and watch the television.”

One Amish entrepreneur, Lucas Hagen, is looking forward to taking full advantage of modern technology.

“I was often ostracized in the Amish community for my blasphemous ideas about loosening Amish traditions,” he said. “Now that I am free to explore life on the outside, I plan to buy a cable TV station and create an Amish Porn Channel.”

If successful, Hagen’s Amish Porn Channel will feature programs in which women take off their bonnets and expose their hair.

Amish Father Schmid is looking forward to being a policeman. “I want to rid the world of illegal butter churning,” he said somberly. “It is costing the government millions every year.”